The following is an open letter to Nick and Matt Jackson, collectively known as The Young Bucks:

Dear Nick and Matt,

I know you guys are very methodical about your careers and despite all of the money you are making outside of the WWE, you’ve got an awful lot of people who are telling you to join the WWE as soon as possible. The two of you are very set on making as much money as possible while your bodies will allow you to, which I completely agree with. I remember reading an interview you guys did a few years ago, where you admitted that you actually lost money working for TNA, which was a sentiment that many actually shared from their tenures with the wrestling league.

Determined to not go broke because of your dream, the both of you chose to start breaking the rules of wrestling, as the traditionalists have put it. Because of your radical business plan, you two have become, arguably, the most influential wrestlers of your generation, by providing a method for making a fortune in wrestling during a time when most of the athletes in the sport are not making a dime, no matter how hard they work. The Young Bucks has gone far beyond being a lucrative brand and become an entirely new way to do business in wrestling. The two of you have some-thing that most folks will never have in their lives, which is autonomy.

The Young Bucks is an act that can go any-where that they want because, despite being signed to Ring of Honor, you guys have a clear schedule that gives you ample room to take advantage of the best choices possible. In the WWE, you’d work 300 days a year with very little input of what you’d get to do next. For Vince McMahon, you’d be just another touring act that would get only a modicum of attention in the long run, because the sport of professional wrestling is built on the individual, not the team.

It’s true that Vince could offer you more money than nearly any promoter and he can definitely give you the biggest spot-light in the world, but would it ever be on your terms like it is now? All of those zeros are going to be pretty tempting, but I would say that you should be leery of any deal that Vince McMahon offers. I’m not going to carry on for too much longer, so I’ll just finish with what I’m here to say and that’s to not go to the WWE.

Before I go any further, I should make a brief confession, which is that I once applied for a job with the WWE. I tried to raise money to buy TNA Wrestling back in 2014 (obviously, I failed miserably) and waited a few years before I tried to get involved with wrestling again outside of writing reviews for wrestling television shows. In 2017, I sent a general letter of interest to Vince McMahon to ask if they were looking for any bookers. I even gave a pathetic little line at the end of how I would not be deterred from my dream of working in professional wrestling (yeah, it’s lame but it’s better than ending it with “I’ll shoot myself if you don’t give me a job!”, if you know what I mean). Vince, of course, never replied, which was expected, but I was getting tired of sitting at home and watching bad wrestling and wanted my chance to try to make a difference in the WWE. When I didn’t get a call back, I wasn’t upset, but I was relieved, because as soon as I sent that letter out I realized that working for Vince McMahon would mean I was working for Vince McMahon, who is a volatile man at best. The fact that my letter was likely just chucked into the trash is like dodging a bullet, because I’ll never have to worry about riding in his jumbo jet and getting a can of cashews thrown at my head while I’m a sleep, just to see if I’ll get pissed about it. You don’t need to get involved in that kind of drama. Hell, it’d make the phrase “watch your back” take on a whole new meaning.

There’s nothing in the WWE for you but broken promises. Vince McMahon will never care about you as much as you will yourself. You are at the point where you no longer need a promoter or a booker to make your career a success. Let the WWE be for people like John Cena or Randy Orton or Brock Lesnar or Jinder Mahal or even Dolph Ziggler. You guys belong on the outside making everybody on the inside feel like they should be looking to you, instead of the other way around.